CHAPTER XXVI
EXPLORATIONS IN FLORIDA AND THE SOUTH ATLANTIC

Obituary published in London on day of his arrival in New York—Assistance from the Government—John Bachman becomes his friend—Winter in Charleston—His folios as gifts—To Florida with two assistants—Letters to Featherstonhaugh—St. Augustine—Misadventures in the mud of East Florida—Audubon on Florida's future—At the sources of the St. John's—Aboard the Marion—Return from Key West—A merchant of Savannah—Disbanding of party at Charleston.

In the summer of 1831 Audubon felt that he must again return to America and extend his researches to the north, south and west, as well as begin a campaign for subscribers in the United States. His large folio was now running into its second volume, and the first installment of his text had been published; the time was favorable to his plans, and he hoped to remain in the country two or three years.

For the second time the publication of his plates was entrusted to friend Children, and with Mrs. Audubon he set sail for New York on August 2, 1831. From the American metropolis he wrote to Joseph B. Kidd on September 7 as follows:[1]

We landed on the 3d ... [of September] after a remarkably fine passage of 33 days. In two days more I proceed to the woods, and away from white man's tracks and manners. I hope you are going on well with your work.... I have a new subscriber here. The papers and scientific journals (we have not many,) are singing the praises of my work, and, God willing, I may yet come out at the broad end of the horn; at all events, I will either break it or make a spoon! I shot sixteen birds on the passage, which I got through the kind attention of our commander. I killed fifty more, when the "Columbia" was going too fast to stop for the purpose of picking them up. My young man is now busily engaged in skinning, and killed a bag-full of warblers yesterday ... prices of peaches, first quality, 75 cents per bushel,—apples, half that price;—water melons are dull of sale, as also cantelopes and nutmeg melons. Fish alive in the markets, and, vive la joie, no taxes on shooting or fishing."

What Audubon actually did was to proceed to Philadelphia, where Mrs. Audubon left him to visit her sons in Louisville, and where he laid his plans for exploring the Southern States, especially the islands and eastern coast of the Florida peninsula. For this expedition he engaged two assistants, one of whom was Henry Ward, the "young man" mentioned above, an Englishman who had come with him to America as taxidermist, while the other was George Lehman, a Swiss landscape painter whom he seems to have found at Philadelphia. With them he soon started for Washington to obtain assistance from the Government.

On the very day that Audubon landed in New York, there appeared in the London Literary Gazette a serio-comic notice under the title of "Wilson the Ornithologist," who, it may be remembered, had died in Philadelphia eighteen years before. Said the editor of the Gazette:

We observe with sorrow an account of the death and burial of poor Wilson, somewhere in the state of Philadelphia, even while the Edinburgh journals are anticipating his return, laden with scientific treasures. We have now before us No. 1 of his Illustrations of American Ornithology, on a reduced scale, to sort with Professor Jameson's edition—a pretty and attractive publication. The coloured prints are extremely correct and well done.

When on September 8 the Edinburgh Caledonian Mercury had called attention to this egregious blunder regarding Wilson, the Gazette explained that his name had been confused with that of Audubon, whose obituary presently appeared in its issue of October 29, the editor remarking that this naturalist's death was equally, if not more, to be deplored than that of Wilson. Captain Brown then sent to the Caledonian Mercury Audubon's letter to Kidd, quoted above, which was written from New York four days after the naturalist's death was announced in England. "What is the editor of the Literary Gazette about," exclaimed a writer in the Edinburgh paper; "he first resuscitates a man who has been dead 18 years, only to kill him again, and then, by way of correcting his error, kills another, who is now clearly proved to have been alive and well several days after the date of his obituary in London."